Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” John 9:1-4
The disciples believed that disease was a punishment for sin. But, in the case of the man born blind, how could he have caused his condition by a sin when he was blind long before he had a chance to commit a sin? So the disciples wondered, not unreasonably, whether perhaps it was the man’s parents who sinned, and who were being punished for their sin by having child with a birth defect.
But Jesus said, “neither this man nor his parents sinned.” But of course both this man and his parents were sinners. What Jesus meant was that his being born blind was not a punishment for any of their sins. But God would use this tragedy for His own glory by giving Jesus Christ the opportunity to heal the man.
Ever since the Fall, disease and death have come into the creation. We live in a fallen world with disease, suffering, and death, and sometimes, through no fault of our own, bad things happen to us. Our number comes up.
My observation is that Adventists chafe at this reality. We, like Jesus’ disciples, want suffering and death to mean something, to have some connection to the cosmic scales of justice. We often say things like, “he wouldn’t have gotten cancer if he had followed the Adventist health message,” the implication being that he brought this on himself. Otherwise where is the justice?
But maybe he did follow the Adventist health message and he got cancer anyway. It happens. Healthy living changes the odds and can spare us certain “lifestyle” diseases of contemporary America, but there is still always a chance that the sinful world in which we live will reach out and zap us.
Children get cancer. (Try to watch an ad for St. Jude and not cry.) What did those kids do to “deserve” cancer? “Deserve” has nothing to do with it. The fact is, we live in a sinful, fallen world, and that is usually the only connection between sin and someone’s misfortune.
We want it to all be “fair” but it isn’t fair. Christianity is not about “fairness” or “justice.” Just the opposite. It isn’t fair that Adam’s sin pitched us into a sinful reality. It isn’t fair that because of his sin, his remote descendants, born thousands of years later, are liable to disease, suffering, and death. It isn’t fair that Adam’s sin is transmitted to his descendants in the form of a fallen nature that has an inborn desire to sin, a bent to sinning. It is not fair but it is a fact.
You know what else is not “fair”? How we are saved. None of us is saved through his own merit. We can never earn it or deserve it. But Christ suffered and died for our sins so that we can be saved, through His merit alone, and none of our own:
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray,
we have turned everyone to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:4-6
The Christian must accept by faith the injustice of the human condition, along with the injustice of our salvation in Jesus Christ. It is not a math problem we can solve if we puzzle over it long enough. The mystery of iniquity is somehow countered by the mystery of salvation. We must accept that, as with the case of the man born blind, God is using a tragedy to His own glory.
Although we are born sinners, lost and condemned, God has provided us grace, unmerited favor, in the salvation that His son Jesus Christ made possible on the cross. God put all of our sins on Jesus Christ, who bore them on Calvary’s tree, to the everlasting glory of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Being a Christian means we are grateful for God’s grace and mercy; it doesn’t mean we will understand why this or that happened to us, or to someone we loved. We have to have faith.